


in the palm of your freezing hand

by Good0mens



Series: I'd be home with you [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ancient Greek Religion & Lore Fusion, Anal Sex, Bottom Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Canon Queer Character of Color, Canon Queer Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, Hades!Nicolo, Inspired by Hades and Persephone (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Light Angst, M/M, Meeting in secret, Metaphors, Persephone!Yusuf, Plant Metaphors, Sexy Times, Star-crossed, Top Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Yearning, flowery language, no really, once again im asking you to suspend your disbelief over greek lore, playing fast and loose with Greek mythology, please
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-14 09:53:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29665485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Good0mens/pseuds/Good0mens
Summary: "It also means they haven’t gone further than bruising, red-tuliped kisses. He’s been yearning to the memory of Nicolo’s frostnip mouth against his neck last winter, when Yusuf was at his weakest; of Yusuf’s gilded hands in Nicolo’s hair, how everything felt like fission and fragmentation before he’d hissed at one lingering kiss, skin quivering and lips swollen-numb, and Nicolo had yanked himself away, wild-eyed and breathing hard.But here, on the vernal equinox, halfway between the winter and summer solstice, everything is dimmed just enough that he should be able to feel Nicolo’s skin on his without the wintry chill biting into his bones, or without giving Nicolo brands in the shape of his hands on Nicolo’s waist."A one-shot for our Hades/Persephone AU, showing Nicolo and Yusuf's first time; set sometime before 'spring, they call her; i call her solitude,'
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: I'd be home with you [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2179953
Comments: 33
Kudos: 178





	in the palm of your freezing hand

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE READ:
> 
> Okay, if you haven't read the tags, please be aware I'm tweaking the lore on greek mythology here, mostly in that in this AU, winter/the seasons existed BEFORE Persephone binds herself to the underworld with Hades. 
> 
> Because of their respective realms, Yusuf and Nicolo burn hot and cold, and in their respective realms/seasons, they can hurt each other (i.e. when it's summer in Yusuf's realm, he's too hot, if it's winter Yusuf is too weak against the cold of Nicolo's powers, etc.). This can be solved if they bind themselves to each other, but Demeter doesn't want that. 
> 
> Yusuf and Nicolo have been meeting in secret, and they finally have an opportunity to be with each other without hurting themselves. 
> 
> I hope that makes sense? Anyway, enjoy!

Nicolò arrives exactly when he said he would, coming up ravishing and rosing with the dawn, and Yusuf lets wistful wisteria blow through him at the sight. The last time they’d seen each other had been all too brief, a stolen moment on the edges of the harvest moon, while his mother had been distracted with her duties.

It’s all still so _new_ , still equal parts thrilling and terrifying, like they could be blown over by a strong summer breeze at any moment. He still remembers the first moment he’d laid eyes on Nicolò – a meeting of life and death, warmth and cold, the icy stare that looked right through him.

Yusuf’s got orange potentilla threaded through his dark curls and his beard, matching the tangerine colour of his toga. Climbing green fig vines wrap itself around the material, holding it together, curling around one bicep like a circlet arm band. He’s coaxing life from the earth as his bare feet step through the soil toward Nicolò.

Nicolò is, as always, tranquil beauty wrapped up in dark cloth and broad shoulders that roll and hold themselves like royalty. His own laurel wreath crown is made of frosted twigged ivory, sharp like his eyes, sure like his movements as he makes his way to Yusuf; purposeful, but not arrogant, as he’d originally presumed him to be. Yusuf is all arrowroot anticipation just _looking_ at him, waiting to burst up from the ground, ready to rise and rise and rise.

When at last they reach each other, Nicolò leans forward and kisses him, in a gentle, close-mouthed greeting. Yusuf almost moans at the shivering autumn sigh in his mouth, and presses further against him. His chest is full of bloodroot and bleeding hearts, winding and curling around his ribcage. Sweet honey desire, oaky and aching, flourishes in his body as they kiss and kiss in the prairie.

Before they can get carried away, Yusuf pulls back.

“We shouldn’t- not here.”

The open field is dangerous to prying eyes and the breeze often carries whispers to Demeter.

He takes Nicolò’s hand and leads him further into the forest, allowing the branches to curve away and let them pass.

Previously, when their hands touched, it ended in either biting frostbite or a severe sunburn. He is the god of spring, unmarred by mortal danger, but Nicolò’s fingertips leave a mark that speaks of unnerving power. When they meet in secret in Yusuf’s realm, when he’s pure summer, they have to be careful, or else his relentless, glowing touches could _hurt_ Nicolò, and that’s the last thing Yusuf wants.

It also means they haven’t gone further than bruising, red-tuliped kisses. He’s been yearning to the memory of Nicolò’s frostnip mouth against his neck last winter, when Yusuf was at his weakest; of Yusuf’s gilded hands in Nicolò’s hair, how everything felt like fission and fragmentation before he’d hissed at one lingering kiss, skin quivering and lips swollen-numb, and Nicolò had yanked himself away, wild-eyed and breathing hard.

But here, on the vernal equinox, halfway between the winter and summer solstice, everything is dimmed just enough that he should be able to feel Nicolò’s skin on his without the wintry chill biting into his bones, or without giving Nicolò brands in the shape of his hands on Nicolò’s waist.

He can hardly wait.

When they reach the small clearing, Nicolò presses Yusuf up against a tree and _devours_ him. It’s an iridescent, incandescent meeting of sensation, and Yusuf is dandelion drunk on the heady contrast, all that heat moving downward, growing lukewarm against Nicolò’s body.

All he wants is _more_ , and more and more. Now that he can have it, he’s ravenous and vigorous as yarrow, and he wants Nicolò in the undergrowth, wants him like dark foliage, wants those fingers thrumming in his body like a thunderstorm on a warm day.

Nicolò curls a hand around his thigh and pulls it around his waist, causing the toga to slip up his leg, exposing the sensitive skin of his groin. Then he fits own thigh between Yusuf’s legs, a hard line for Yusuf to rut up against.

Yusuf breaks the kiss and groans, “Nicolò, _oh_ -”

“I know,” Nicolò returns, similarly overwhelmed, leaning his forehead against Yusuf’s while they both try to calm down.

Yusuf pushes Nicolò forward until he gets the idea and sits on the bed of flowers that have formed for them on the ground. He slides into Nicolò’s lap then, and leans down to capture his mouth once more.

Now, when he shifts downward, he can feel Nicolò’s full cock up against his own, and it lights a brambling, burning desire in him, shooting up his spine like he’s being licked by flame. 

Nicolò’s fingers slip under the curl of one ivy stem on his arm to brush his skin. It trembles, falls away with the fastening of his dress. Nicolò’s eyes roam over Yusuf’s chest, taking in the new expanse of skin exposed to him.

In return, Yusuf rips open the fabric of Nicolò’s toga, and the ivy climbs up to pull at the material, allowing Yusuf to sink his hands into Nicolò’s hair and kiss him again while it does away with the rest of their clothing.

Yusuf sighs as Nicolò’s fingers find glorious absolution on the birch tree boughs of his thighs, tightening and pulling Yusuf in closer. The need in him is languid, lavender inflorescence in his groin. It feels divine to feel Nicolò bare and wanting against him.

“I love you,” Nicolò murmurs, reverent in a way that’s certainly not fit for a god _(who does a god pray to?)._

Snowdrop bulbs fall from the canopy of moonbeam coreopsis hanging above them. Nicolò laughs at Yusuf’s blush as they land on the makeshift bed of golden shadows and goldenrod threaded together beneath them. Then he brushes a thumb along Yusuf’s cheekbone and kisses him again, and Yusuf’s whispering reply of _only you_ , is lost against his lips.

There’s yellow pollen speckled along Nicolò’s bottom lip when he pulls away, and it looks like stardust. Yusuf can’t resist leaning forward to lick off the sweet nectar gathering there, sipping the syrupy love dripping from him like myrrh, revelling in the knowledge that he doesn’t have to try and contain all the warmth inside of him, nor will Nicolò’s ever-present coolness from the underworld weaken him.

Cold lips close around one hard nipple, and Yusuf lets out a quivering sigh, tugging Nicolò in further so he’s curled around his lover’s body. Every moan out of their mouths is dizzying birdsong, warbling and cooing – who knew tragedy could be lined with such sweetness?

Nicolò nibbles at his neck long enough for his mouth to be warm and tingly when Yusuf touches them with his fingers. He lingers on them for a moment, before flicking his gaze back to Nicolò’s hooded eyes.

“ _Nicolò,_ I want you,” Yusuf says softly.

This may be the only opportunity they have for this, and even if the pain of Nicolò leaving him afterward is a rotting peach in his gut, even if this day is all they get – Yusuf will take it. He knows he would endure much more for just a moment by Nicolò’s side.

When he finally, finally, finally sinks down onto Nicolò’s cock, he swears he swallows a whole summertide into his body, bursting and blooming and budding in him. The steady slide down is heaven ( _what is heaven to a god?)_ and Yusuf lets out a gladiolus groan as pre-come spurges out of his cock.

Nicolò is breathing heavily beneath him, eyes pinched shut. Yusuf swivels his hips and Nicolò lets out a high pitched whine, hands gripping and grappling at Yusuf’s hips for purchase.

“Are you alright?” Yusuf asks, waiting for Nicolò to blink those seafoam green eyes up at him.

“I-I’ve never been so _warm,_ ” Nicolò shudders, flushed all the way down his chest, and Yusuf grins.

There’s a steam of power crackling around them, unstable air moving erratically. Clouds are gathering in the sky, but all Yusuf can focus on is the gorgeous being below him.

“You make me feel alive,” Nicolò says breathlessly.

He is arching abroma under Nicolò’s palms; Nicolò wraps a hand around the carpel of his blossoming cock, sticky with seed dripping from the tip. Yusuf chokes on a moan, hips stuttering.

“ _Oh, please, please_ -”

Nicolò groans then, shoving himself up in harder, yanking Yusuf toward him for another kiss. They’re quickly spinning out of control, delving deeper into their own bodies, cool air and humid moisture colliding and colliding together. There’s a faint hiss of sensation as their lips meet again - Gods were not made for gentleness, but this is the most tender brutality he’s ever felt.

Yusuf is sprouting, both in his body and out from the ground, flowers springing up and vines curling and curling around him and Nicolò, holding them close together while the pleasure grows. The orgasm is building and burgeoning from the base of his spine, and he can’t help but try to get Nicolò _deeper,_ take him further, and it’s rising _up, up, up_ , until Nicolò fucks up while Yusuf is shoving himself down and-

 _Oh._ Every springtime that lives in his body breaks open, lets loose in shoots and bursts all over himself and Nicolò. The sky cracks open with a thundering boom, and then rain is soaking the earth, soaking their joined lips as Nicolò moves faster in him until he empties inside Yusuf with a noise lost to the sound of the storm around them.

* * *

In the hum of evening, before Nicolò turns to leave, Yusuf tightens his grip on his hand.

“When can I visit you again, in the underworld?”

Nicolò hesitates. Yusuf knows he’s afraid of the possibility of being found, of having this end. They’ve heard the stories: Heracles and Megara, Achilles and Patroclus, Icarus and Apollo – this world does not look kindly upon lovers, especially those who dare to defy fate. 

Nicolò’s words when Yusuf first arrived there come unbidden to him:

_You can’t eat anything here, lest you bind yourself to this realm. To me._

Every time they part, Yusuf is hungrier and hungrier for that seeded fruit; to hold it in his palms, cleave it in two and share it with Nicolò, for their mouths to be stained red-sweet as they slide against each other. Would its juices in Nicolò’s mouth taste like the freedom he craves? If they were bound together in the underworld, their essences joined, they wouldn’t have to wait for these aching equinoxes to touch each other the way they want to.

“Soon, my love; I will take you to the great meadow and show you the Asphodels,” Nicolò promises, with a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. ( _what does a god pray for?)_

Yusuf understands, although it doesn’t make saying goodbye any easier.

“Will you play for me, when I see you again?” Yusuf asks.

Nicolò has a lovely singing voice, rough and textured but no less beautiful for its sharp edges. Yusuf could spend hours watching his big hands hold a lyre and pluck its strings as if they were attached to Yusuf’s heart.

“Of course.”

When Nicolò walks away, Yusuf lets the path of his footsteps dry up and crumble, and everything Yusuf touches wilts a little, the leaves sighing out his grief as Nicolò disappears out of his sight.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, please leave a comment! I am thinking of making a third of this one eventually, with a happy ending all around  
> Come yell at me on [tumblr](https://peachpitandpomegranate.tumblr.com/)


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